Last week a latch popped on the main mash tun at Marz Community Brewing, sending water, wheat, and oats cascading all over the floor. What was intended to become an IPA overwhelmed the drainage system and “it just halted the day,” says Joe Guzzo. “Anyone who says that brewing is not a glorified janitorial occupation doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”
In addition to its prodigious malted output, Marz has plunged into the nonalcoholic beverage arena over the last year, canning and bottling shrubs, kombuchas, waters, coffees, and other intoxicating—but alcohol free—beverages, such as a sparkling yerba mate and a delicately floral CBD-spiked seltzer with seven different botanicals that makes your favorite La Croix flavor taste like fizzy hand lotion.
This led to pop-ups at the quarterly parties he and his roommates threw at the 5,000-square-foot art space where they live, and where he cooked hundreds of servings of lumpia, Chengdu-style dumplings, fried rice, and five-spice tofu larb. Private dinners and remote pop-ups followed and continue.
“I think there’s a lot of beverages in the general market that use sweetness as a crutch,” he says. “You can really cover up a lot of things and also just imbalance entire beverages. Not everything you eat and drink should give you instant gratification. I don’t want to sacrifice complexity and depth by overpowering it with something like sugar.”
Sat 10/12, noon-6 PM at Marz Community Brewing Taproom, 3630 S. Iron, 773-579-1935, marz.com. Free, but 21+, with food and drink tokens for sale.
